Seven years ago this month, in the aftermath of the attack on Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, one call to action rose above the din: “Say their names.” New Yorkers chanted it steps from the Stonewall Inn. The mother of a child gunned down at Sandy Hook penned it in an open letter. The Orlando Sentinel printed the names. Anderson Cooper recited them. A gunman, 29-year-old Omar Mateen, murdered 49 people and wounded 53 others in the wee hours of that awful Sunday, massacring LGBTQ people of color and their allies in the middle of Pride Month, and the commemoration of the dead demanded knowing who they were. “These,” as MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell urged his viewers, “are the names to remember.”
The titles on our list of the best LGBTQ movies of all time are a globe-spanning, multigenerational testament to our existence in a world where our erasure is no abstraction. From...
The titles on our list of the best LGBTQ movies of all time are a globe-spanning, multigenerational testament to our existence in a world where our erasure is no abstraction. From...
- 6/12/2023
- by Slant Staff
- Slant Magazine
With half the decade spent in the midst of a century-defining world war and the other half spent recovering from its horrors, it's understandable that cinema in the 1940s would be a little bit on the dark side. While films explicitly about World War II dominated the early years of the 1940s, they quickly gave way to utterly unique film noir movies. Less a genre and more a series of stylistic elements, these pictures were defined by their seediness, cynicism, and focus on crime that reflected the trauma of filmmakers and audiences alike.
Still, 1940s cinema isn't all dark! The decade actually has a surprising amount of humor, with both satire and romantic comedies proving popular in Hollywood. You can almost feel films from this era negotiating between two powerful emotions: the anguish that the turbulent 1930s and 1940s brought along with them, and the joy that existed in spite of it.
Still, 1940s cinema isn't all dark! The decade actually has a surprising amount of humor, with both satire and romantic comedies proving popular in Hollywood. You can almost feel films from this era negotiating between two powerful emotions: the anguish that the turbulent 1930s and 1940s brought along with them, and the joy that existed in spite of it.
- 11/20/2022
- by Audrey Fox
- Slash Film
Ah, the musical! When sound became a part of the movies, the genre was all the rage, absolutely dominating the 1940s and '50s. Then, there was an exceptionally long period when musicals were few and far between. Thankfully, for those who love them, musicals have made a pretty strong comeback in the 21st century, with "Chicago" winning a best picture Oscar and films like "La La Land," "Dreamgirls," Steven Spielberg's "West Side Story," and "Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again" making an impact at the box office.
Thankfully, these joyous explosions of music and visuals have regained their popularity in mainstream cinema. While they haven't quite reached the popularity they had decades ago, you can count on at least a couple of quality musicals being released each year, which is a great thrill for fans of the genre. I'd prefer one released each month, but I'll take what I can get!
Thankfully, these joyous explosions of music and visuals have regained their popularity in mainstream cinema. While they haven't quite reached the popularity they had decades ago, you can count on at least a couple of quality musicals being released each year, which is a great thrill for fans of the genre. I'd prefer one released each month, but I'll take what I can get!
- 9/28/2022
- by Barry Levitt
- Slash Film
Wassim Beji, the French producer of “Boite noire,” and Snd have acquired the adaptation rights to iconic French detective novels “Fantomas” and are planning a film and a series based on the franchise.
A ruthless and multi-faceted thief and assassin, Fantomas “was the first occidental super-villain featured in a serialized format, first through comic strips and later in a radio series,” said Beji, adding that “Fantomas” has also been a source of inspiration for some of the greatest artists of the 20th century, including the surrealist poet Guillaume Apollinaire.
Created in 1911 by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, Fantomas is one of France’s most popular fictional characters, along with Arsene Lupin. Fantomas was first adapted for the big screen by into a silent crime film serial directed by Louis Feuillade for Gaumont in 1913. The property was later adapted into a crime comedy trilogy starring Jean Marais and Louis de Fines...
A ruthless and multi-faceted thief and assassin, Fantomas “was the first occidental super-villain featured in a serialized format, first through comic strips and later in a radio series,” said Beji, adding that “Fantomas” has also been a source of inspiration for some of the greatest artists of the 20th century, including the surrealist poet Guillaume Apollinaire.
Created in 1911 by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, Fantomas is one of France’s most popular fictional characters, along with Arsene Lupin. Fantomas was first adapted for the big screen by into a silent crime film serial directed by Louis Feuillade for Gaumont in 1913. The property was later adapted into a crime comedy trilogy starring Jean Marais and Louis de Fines...
- 8/10/2022
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Rémy Julienne, the prolific stuntman and coordinator who amassed hundreds of credits over a six-decade-strong career, has died at the age of 90 after contracting Covid-19.
French newswires said the France native had been in intensive care in a hospital in the central town of Montargis since early January.
Julienne began as a French motocross champion before breaking into films in the 1960s, initially as a double for actor Jean Marais in a motorcycle scene in the movie Fantomas. He went on to perform and coordinate stunts on multiple entries in the James Bond franchise, and also worked as a stunt double for famed actors such as Michael Caine in The Italian Job.
He also coordinated the attraction Moteurs… Action! Stunt Show Spectacular at Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris and set up a specialist school for stunt drivers in France.
His career hit difficulties in 1999 when a stunt went wrong...
French newswires said the France native had been in intensive care in a hospital in the central town of Montargis since early January.
Julienne began as a French motocross champion before breaking into films in the 1960s, initially as a double for actor Jean Marais in a motorcycle scene in the movie Fantomas. He went on to perform and coordinate stunts on multiple entries in the James Bond franchise, and also worked as a stunt double for famed actors such as Michael Caine in The Italian Job.
He also coordinated the attraction Moteurs… Action! Stunt Show Spectacular at Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris and set up a specialist school for stunt drivers in France.
His career hit difficulties in 1999 when a stunt went wrong...
- 1/22/2021
- by Tom Grater
- Deadline Film + TV
“France’S Answer To Bond”
By Raymond Benson
Way back in 1911, French writers Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre created a super-villain who became a worldwide phenomenon in literature, comics, and film—Fantômas, a master of disguise, thief, killer, and head of his own network of criminals. The two authors wrote 32 books featuring the character, and then Allain alone continued with 11 more. There was a serial of silent films made in France beginning with Fantômas. Over the last century, more films, comics, books, and television series were produced, leading up to the hugely popular reboot of the character in the 1960s.
After the success of the first James Bond film Dr. No (1962), the French studio Gaumont quickly got into the act of making their own answer to what was becoming a phenomenon. Once From Russia with Love (1963) proved that 007 wasn’t a one-shot wonder, director André Hunebelle and writers Jean Halain...
By Raymond Benson
Way back in 1911, French writers Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre created a super-villain who became a worldwide phenomenon in literature, comics, and film—Fantômas, a master of disguise, thief, killer, and head of his own network of criminals. The two authors wrote 32 books featuring the character, and then Allain alone continued with 11 more. There was a serial of silent films made in France beginning with Fantômas. Over the last century, more films, comics, books, and television series were produced, leading up to the hugely popular reboot of the character in the 1960s.
After the success of the first James Bond film Dr. No (1962), the French studio Gaumont quickly got into the act of making their own answer to what was becoming a phenomenon. Once From Russia with Love (1963) proved that 007 wasn’t a one-shot wonder, director André Hunebelle and writers Jean Halain...
- 5/1/2020
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Fantômas – Three Film Collection
Blu ray
Kino Lorber
1964, 1965, 1967 / 2.35 : 1 / 322 Min.
Starring Jean Marais, Louis de Funès, Mylène Demongeot
Directed by André Hunebelle
Eighteen years after playing the duel roles of an aristocratic monster and his swashbuckling adversary in Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, Jean Marais got the chance for a reprise – this time as a two-fisted reporter named Fandor and his bête noire, the otherworldly antihero Fantômas.
He (they?) were the protagonists of a colorful trio of swinging sixties satires directed by André Hunebelle between 1964 and 1967 – each chapter was the CinemaScope equivalent of a chocolate sorbet and loaded with the same self-amused ironies of the French New Wave and the Batman TV show.
Fantômas even has his own Batcave, plotting his next move from a luxurious underground lair seemingly decorated by Captain Nemo and the Phantom of the Opera. The very definition of a protean figure, this phantom rotates...
Blu ray
Kino Lorber
1964, 1965, 1967 / 2.35 : 1 / 322 Min.
Starring Jean Marais, Louis de Funès, Mylène Demongeot
Directed by André Hunebelle
Eighteen years after playing the duel roles of an aristocratic monster and his swashbuckling adversary in Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, Jean Marais got the chance for a reprise – this time as a two-fisted reporter named Fandor and his bête noire, the otherworldly antihero Fantômas.
He (they?) were the protagonists of a colorful trio of swinging sixties satires directed by André Hunebelle between 1964 and 1967 – each chapter was the CinemaScope equivalent of a chocolate sorbet and loaded with the same self-amused ironies of the French New Wave and the Batman TV show.
Fantômas even has his own Batcave, plotting his next move from a luxurious underground lair seemingly decorated by Captain Nemo and the Phantom of the Opera. The very definition of a protean figure, this phantom rotates...
- 5/21/2019
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
Jean Marais’ journey through the underworld gains new strangeness and rapture in this restoration of Jean Cocteau’s 1950 Orpheus myth
Jean Cocteau’s Orphée from 1950 is now re-released nationally, as part of the BFI Southbank season: Fantastique: The Dream Worlds of French Cinema. It has the mystery and elasticity of a dream, and all the farcical comic horror of chancing across the intricate contents of the Blessed Virgin’s lingerie collection. Cocteau’s reworking of the Orpheus myth includes new layers of strangeness and rapture. The setting would appear to be the present: that is, postwar France; Orphée (Jean Marais) is a celebrated poet – sufficiently celebrated, in fact, to be at one stage surrounded by excitable young autograph hunters that might otherwise be entranced by the burgeoning pop culture. Orphée witnesses a noted younger poet being killed by a couple of bikers after a brawl: this is Cégeste (Edouard Dermithe...
Jean Cocteau’s Orphée from 1950 is now re-released nationally, as part of the BFI Southbank season: Fantastique: The Dream Worlds of French Cinema. It has the mystery and elasticity of a dream, and all the farcical comic horror of chancing across the intricate contents of the Blessed Virgin’s lingerie collection. Cocteau’s reworking of the Orpheus myth includes new layers of strangeness and rapture. The setting would appear to be the present: that is, postwar France; Orphée (Jean Marais) is a celebrated poet – sufficiently celebrated, in fact, to be at one stage surrounded by excitable young autograph hunters that might otherwise be entranced by the burgeoning pop culture. Orphée witnesses a noted younger poet being killed by a couple of bikers after a brawl: this is Cégeste (Edouard Dermithe...
- 10/18/2018
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Jean Cocteau’s film work wasn’t limited to fairy tales and art-house fantasies; this adaptation of his hit play shows us fine theater at its best. A family is a tangle of not-quite-normal relationships that reach an impasse when the emotionally spoiled son seeks to marry — a woman his father already knows.
Les parents terribles
Blu-ray
Cohen Film Collection
1948 / B&W / 1:37 flat full frame / 100 min. / The Storm Within / Street Date October 30, 2018 / 30.99
Starring: Jean Marais, Josette Day, Yvonne de Bray, Marcel André, Gabrielle Dorziat.
Cinematography: Michel Kelber
Film Editor: Jacqueline Sadoul
Original Music: Georges Auric
Written by Jean Cocteau from his play
Produced by Francis Cosne, Alexandre Mnouchkine
Directed by Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau’s 1929 novel Les enfants terribles was made into a 1950 movie in collaboration with Jean-Pierre Melville. Cocteau’s later play Les parents terribles has only a vague connection beyond the title — both toy with family relationships that lean toward incest.
Les parents terribles
Blu-ray
Cohen Film Collection
1948 / B&W / 1:37 flat full frame / 100 min. / The Storm Within / Street Date October 30, 2018 / 30.99
Starring: Jean Marais, Josette Day, Yvonne de Bray, Marcel André, Gabrielle Dorziat.
Cinematography: Michel Kelber
Film Editor: Jacqueline Sadoul
Original Music: Georges Auric
Written by Jean Cocteau from his play
Produced by Francis Cosne, Alexandre Mnouchkine
Directed by Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau’s 1929 novel Les enfants terribles was made into a 1950 movie in collaboration with Jean-Pierre Melville. Cocteau’s later play Les parents terribles has only a vague connection beyond the title — both toy with family relationships that lean toward incest.
- 10/16/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
To many film fans, Nicolas Cage is a strange concoction. A figure of hilariously over-the-top acting and memeification when it comes to his rather peculiar career choices. But life was not always this way with Nicolas Kim Coppola.
Before entering the world of acting, Cage decided to dissociate himself away from the connotations that would go along with being known as a ‘Coppola’. In a world where Sofia is now fully adorning of the name in her directorial career, it is peculiar to imagine an alternative reality where there is another more eccentric Coppola on the scene.
His latest role is in York Shackleton‘s 211 as a cop nearing retirement, given the task of taking a troubled high school teen on a police ride along. Nothing could go wrong – right? In true action thriller fashion they run into a huge bank heist and in the confusion the young teen goes missing.
Before entering the world of acting, Cage decided to dissociate himself away from the connotations that would go along with being known as a ‘Coppola’. In a world where Sofia is now fully adorning of the name in her directorial career, it is peculiar to imagine an alternative reality where there is another more eccentric Coppola on the scene.
His latest role is in York Shackleton‘s 211 as a cop nearing retirement, given the task of taking a troubled high school teen on a police ride along. Nothing could go wrong – right? In true action thriller fashion they run into a huge bank heist and in the confusion the young teen goes missing.
- 7/18/2018
- by Alasdair Bayman
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Jean Cocteau’s filmography could be considered relatively modest compared to some of his French brethren — but with an output among cinema’s most immense, no less influential. While I imagine most reading this have seen his canonical landmarks such as La Belle et la Bête and Orphée, there are still a select few that go overlooked due to lack of distribution.
Les parents terribles (The Storm Within) will, thankfully, no longer be one, for the Cohen Film Collection have given his 1948 melodrama a 70th-anniversary 2K restoration, and it will finally make a U.S. premiere this Friday at the Quad Cinema. Adapted by Cocteau from his own stage play and featuring the same cast of Gabrielle Dorziat, Jean Marais, Josette Day, Marcel André, and Yvonne de Bray, the film follows a man who, while still living with his parents and aunt, falls for his father’s mistress.
We’re...
Les parents terribles (The Storm Within) will, thankfully, no longer be one, for the Cohen Film Collection have given his 1948 melodrama a 70th-anniversary 2K restoration, and it will finally make a U.S. premiere this Friday at the Quad Cinema. Adapted by Cocteau from his own stage play and featuring the same cast of Gabrielle Dorziat, Jean Marais, Josette Day, Marcel André, and Yvonne de Bray, the film follows a man who, while still living with his parents and aunt, falls for his father’s mistress.
We’re...
- 5/22/2018
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Red (raspberries), white (wine) and blue (lobster) — and possibly, by special request, one very well done faux filet steak — will be on order tomorrow when French President Emmanuel Macron takes the Trumps out to dinner.
Instead of a state dinner inside the Elysées Palace, the two presidents and their wives will dine informally at chef Alain Ducasse’s Le Jules Verne, People has learned.
The President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania are escaping to Paris – just a few days after returning to the U.S. from Germany for the G20 summit – amid growing controversy over Donald Jr.’s 2016 meeting...
Instead of a state dinner inside the Elysées Palace, the two presidents and their wives will dine informally at chef Alain Ducasse’s Le Jules Verne, People has learned.
The President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania are escaping to Paris – just a few days after returning to the U.S. from Germany for the G20 summit – amid growing controversy over Donald Jr.’s 2016 meeting...
- 7/12/2017
- by Peter Mikelbank
- PEOPLE.com
Although François Truffaut has written that the New Wave began “thanks to Jacquette Rivette,” the films of this masterful French director are not well known. Rivette, like his “Cahiers du Cinéma” colleagues Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and Éric Rohmer, did graduate to filmmaking but, like Rohmer, was something of a late bloomer as a director.
In 1969, he directed the 4-hour L’amour fou (1969), the now legendary 13-hour Out 1 (1971) (made for French TV in 1970 but never broadcast; edited to a 4-hour feature and retitled Out 1: Spectre (1972)), and the 3-hour Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974), his most entertaining and widely seen picture. In these three films, Rivette began to construct what has come to be called his “House of Fiction”–an enigmatic filmmaking style involving improvisation, ellipsis and considerable narrative experimentation.
Celine and Julie Go Boating
In 1975, Jacques Rivette reunited with Out 1 producer Stéphane Tchal Gadjieff with the idea of a four-film cycle.
In 1969, he directed the 4-hour L’amour fou (1969), the now legendary 13-hour Out 1 (1971) (made for French TV in 1970 but never broadcast; edited to a 4-hour feature and retitled Out 1: Spectre (1972)), and the 3-hour Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974), his most entertaining and widely seen picture. In these three films, Rivette began to construct what has come to be called his “House of Fiction”–an enigmatic filmmaking style involving improvisation, ellipsis and considerable narrative experimentation.
Celine and Julie Go Boating
In 1975, Jacques Rivette reunited with Out 1 producer Stéphane Tchal Gadjieff with the idea of a four-film cycle.
- 5/1/2017
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Yvonne Monlaur: Cult horror movie actress & Bond Girl contender was featured in the 1960 British classics 'Circus of Horrors' & 'The Brides of Dracula.' Actress Yvonne Monlaur dead at 77: Best remembered for cult horror classics 'Circus of Horrors' & 'The Brides of Dracula' Actress Yvonne Monlaur, best known for her roles in the 1960 British cult horror classics Circus of Horrors and The Brides of Dracula, died of cardiac arrest on April 18 in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. Monlaur was 77. According to various online sources, she was born Yvonne Thérèse Marie Camille Bédat de Monlaur in the southwestern town of Pau, in France's Pyrénées-Atlantiques department, on Dec. 15, 1939. Her father was poet and librettist Pierre Bédat de Monlaur; her mother was a Russian ballet dancer. The young Yvonne was trained in ballet and while still a teenager became a model for Elle magazine. She was “discovered” by newspaper publisher-turned-director André Hunebelle,...
- 4/27/2017
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Each month, the fine folks at FilmStruck and the Criterion Collection spend countless hours crafting their channels to highlight the many different types of films that they have in their streaming library. This April will feature an exciting assortment of films, as noted below.
To sign up for a free two-week trial here.
Monday, April 3 The Chaos of Cool: A Tribute to Seijun Suzuki
In February, cinema lost an icon of excess, Seijun Suzuki, the Japanese master who took the art of the B movie to sublime new heights with his deliriously inventive approach to narrative and visual style. This series showcases seven of the New Wave renegade’s works from his career breakthrough in the sixties: Take Aim at the Police Van (1960), an off-kilter whodunit; Youth of the Beast (1963), an explosive yakuza thriller; Gate of Flesh (1964), a pulpy social critique; Story of a Prostitute (1965), a tragic romance; Tokyo Drifter...
To sign up for a free two-week trial here.
Monday, April 3 The Chaos of Cool: A Tribute to Seijun Suzuki
In February, cinema lost an icon of excess, Seijun Suzuki, the Japanese master who took the art of the B movie to sublime new heights with his deliriously inventive approach to narrative and visual style. This series showcases seven of the New Wave renegade’s works from his career breakthrough in the sixties: Take Aim at the Police Van (1960), an off-kilter whodunit; Youth of the Beast (1963), an explosive yakuza thriller; Gate of Flesh (1964), a pulpy social critique; Story of a Prostitute (1965), a tragic romance; Tokyo Drifter...
- 3/29/2017
- by Ryan Gallagher
- CriterionCast
Forget Disney’s recent reiteration of the classic fairy tale and instead look back at where the tale’s magic began on film, with Jean Cocteau.
The self-titled Belle and her captor-turned-prince Beast have returned to cinema screens around the world. In Disney’s latest live-action reiteration of one of their much-loved animated fairytales, Bill Condon’s live-action Beauty and the Beast has reintroduced contemporary audiences to the pair. With their return has come explorations of Disney’s representations of gayness, the question of modern viewing habits, and record-breaking box office success (the film has broken the March record for best opening with a $175m domestic gross).
This multiplicity of films on the same tale has been seen before, with the reintroduction of Snow White in 2012 arriving in the form of three very different films. 2012 brought the strong and defiant rebel ‘Snow’ in Snow White and the Huntsman, while Mirror Mirror restyled the classic tale. Pablo Berger...
The self-titled Belle and her captor-turned-prince Beast have returned to cinema screens around the world. In Disney’s latest live-action reiteration of one of their much-loved animated fairytales, Bill Condon’s live-action Beauty and the Beast has reintroduced contemporary audiences to the pair. With their return has come explorations of Disney’s representations of gayness, the question of modern viewing habits, and record-breaking box office success (the film has broken the March record for best opening with a $175m domestic gross).
This multiplicity of films on the same tale has been seen before, with the reintroduction of Snow White in 2012 arriving in the form of three very different films. 2012 brought the strong and defiant rebel ‘Snow’ in Snow White and the Huntsman, while Mirror Mirror restyled the classic tale. Pablo Berger...
- 3/23/2017
- by Sinéad McCausland
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
Taking a look at the French director’s fascinating filmography.
One of the biggest films of 2016, La La Land, owes a thing or two to French director Jacques Demy. The bright, colorful musical visually mirrors Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), and director Damien Chazelle was able to capture something of the melancholic sweetness of Demy’s musicals. Demy is not one of the most famous French directors, however his films have a specific charm and intelligence that no other filmmaker could match. The way he blended Hollywood style with French culture was unlike any other filmmaker at the time.
Demy began his career in 1960s France, during the time of the “Nouvelle Vague” or French New Wave. This was the time of films such as Breathless, Jules and Jim, The 400 Blows, and Le Beau Serge. However, Demy lies a little bit outside of this group of filmmakers, and...
One of the biggest films of 2016, La La Land, owes a thing or two to French director Jacques Demy. The bright, colorful musical visually mirrors Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), and director Damien Chazelle was able to capture something of the melancholic sweetness of Demy’s musicals. Demy is not one of the most famous French directors, however his films have a specific charm and intelligence that no other filmmaker could match. The way he blended Hollywood style with French culture was unlike any other filmmaker at the time.
Demy began his career in 1960s France, during the time of the “Nouvelle Vague” or French New Wave. This was the time of films such as Breathless, Jules and Jim, The 400 Blows, and Le Beau Serge. However, Demy lies a little bit outside of this group of filmmakers, and...
- 3/20/2017
- by Angela Morrison
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
Disney wants us to know that Bill Condon’s “Beauty and the Beast” is a vital live-action remake of its own 1991 animated classic. Alan Menken and Tim Rice wrote three new songs for the film, and in interviews, Condon promised the first “exclusively gay moment in a Disney movie.”
They succeeded on one point: The film’s most Broadway-like thrills come from the Menken-Rice tune written as the Beast’s soliloquy. As for that gay moment, it’s tough to know which one he meant. There are a few winks and nods, the most apparent being a gag at the end where Wardrobe dresses three intruders in women’s clothes. In what could have been another tired cross-dressing gag (two men run away in disgust), a third stares directly into camera, beaming. Condon also might have been referring to another blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, when Monsieur LeFou (Josh Gad), right-hand man to Belle’s suitor Gaston,...
They succeeded on one point: The film’s most Broadway-like thrills come from the Menken-Rice tune written as the Beast’s soliloquy. As for that gay moment, it’s tough to know which one he meant. There are a few winks and nods, the most apparent being a gag at the end where Wardrobe dresses three intruders in women’s clothes. In what could have been another tired cross-dressing gag (two men run away in disgust), a third stares directly into camera, beaming. Condon also might have been referring to another blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, when Monsieur LeFou (Josh Gad), right-hand man to Belle’s suitor Gaston,...
- 3/3/2017
- by Jude Dry
- Indiewire
The great film historian Kevin Brownlow, who has devoted large sections of his life to restoring Abel Gance's 1927 epic Napoleon, takes a dim view of this one. And indeed Austerlitz, a.k.a. The Battle of Austerlitz, has several strikes against it, belongs to several categories of film maudit all at once. It's a late film by a seventy-one-year-old director whose best work, by universal consensus, was in the silent era; it's a kind of belated sequel, the further adventures of Napoleon Bonaparte; it's a Salkind production.Incidentally, viewing the lavish sets for this movie, we can see how the Salkinds, those roving multinational mountebanks, ran up the unpaid studio bills in Yugoslavia which kept Orson Welles from building the elaborate vanishing sets he had planned for The Trial (starting realistic, it would have ended up playing in a featureless void), necessitating the repurposing of a disused Parisian railway station.
- 12/1/2016
- MUBI
Chicago – One of the legendary films in cinema history is Jean Cocteau’s “La Belle et La Bete,” also known to generations as “Beauty and the Beast.” The restored re-release is touring the country, and in Chicago it’s currently at the Gene Siskel Film Center, and Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com will lead a discussion of the film there on Monday, April 11, 2016.
Rating: 4.5/5.0
The story is adapted from a traditional fairy tale, but in Cocteau’s hand is more adult-like, even more so than the sophisticated Disney animated version. The “Beauty” is about sexual blossoming, and the “Beast” is willing to accommodate, but first some trials must be had. What makes the film so unusual is the palette on which this multi-textured story takes place, an expressly creative landscape of dreams, with a production design (by Christian Bérard and Lucien Carré) that uses every inch of the ‘Academy Aspect...
Rating: 4.5/5.0
The story is adapted from a traditional fairy tale, but in Cocteau’s hand is more adult-like, even more so than the sophisticated Disney animated version. The “Beauty” is about sexual blossoming, and the “Beast” is willing to accommodate, but first some trials must be had. What makes the film so unusual is the palette on which this multi-textured story takes place, an expressly creative landscape of dreams, with a production design (by Christian Bérard and Lucien Carré) that uses every inch of the ‘Academy Aspect...
- 4/10/2016
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
Ingrid Bergman ca. early 1940s. Ingrid Bergman movies on TCM: From the artificial 'Gaslight' to the magisterial 'Autumn Sonata' Two days ago, Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” series highlighted the film career of Greta Garbo. Today, Aug. 28, '15, TCM is focusing on another Swedish actress, three-time Academy Award winner Ingrid Bergman, who would have turned 100 years old tomorrow. TCM has likely aired most of Bergman's Hollywood films, and at least some of her early Swedish work. As a result, today's only premiere is Fielder Cook's little-seen and little-remembered From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1973), about two bored kids (Sally Prager, Johnny Doran) who run away from home and end up at New York City's Metropolitan Museum. Obviously, this is no A Night at the Museum – and that's a major plus. Bergman plays an elderly art lover who takes an interest in them; her...
- 8/28/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
If René Clément's short collaboration with Jacques Tati in 1936 has its later development in the surprising (and political) slapstick of Che gioia vivere (1962), his technical assistance to Jean Cocteau on Beauty and the Beast pays off more rapidly with Le château de verre (The Glass Castle, 1950), starring Cocteau's beautiful beast, Jean Marais, and ice queen monstré sacré Michelle Morgan. This one came highly recommended by Shadowplayer David Wingrove, who saw in its opening sequence a foreshadowing of Last Year at Marienbad's glacial surrealism—frozen figures, somnambulent dancers, palatial surroundings. In fact, the Clément film comes with le jazz hot, and the frozen figures aren't frozen, but there is certainly an air of decadent mystery, with Jean Servais as the chess-playing husband a passable progenitor of the Resnais movie's sepulchral M.But there's more! We begin with a disembodied voice (another Marienbad trope) and open in a fabulous grotto,...
- 3/10/2015
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
Qui aime les films français ?
If you do and you live in St. Louis, you’re in luck! The Seventh Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — co-presented by Cinema St. Louis and the Webster University Film Series begins March 13th. The Classic French Film Festival celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1930s through the early 1990s, offering a comprehensive overview of French cinema. The fest is annually highlighted by significant restorations.
This year features recent restorations of eight works, including an extended director’s cut of Patrice Chéreau’s historical epic Queen Margot a New York-set film noir (Two Men In Manhattan) by crime-film maestro Jean-Pierre Melville, who also co-stars; a short feature (“A Day in the Country”) by Jean Renoir, on a double bill with the 2006 restoration of his masterpiece, The Rules Of The Game, and the...
If you do and you live in St. Louis, you’re in luck! The Seventh Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — co-presented by Cinema St. Louis and the Webster University Film Series begins March 13th. The Classic French Film Festival celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1930s through the early 1990s, offering a comprehensive overview of French cinema. The fest is annually highlighted by significant restorations.
This year features recent restorations of eight works, including an extended director’s cut of Patrice Chéreau’s historical epic Queen Margot a New York-set film noir (Two Men In Manhattan) by crime-film maestro Jean-Pierre Melville, who also co-stars; a short feature (“A Day in the Country”) by Jean Renoir, on a double bill with the 2006 restoration of his masterpiece, The Rules Of The Game, and the...
- 3/4/2015
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Marc Allégret: From André Gide lover to Simone Simon mentor (photo: Marc Allégret) (See previous post: "Simone Simon Remembered: Sex Kitten and Femme Fatale.") Simone Simon became a film star following the international critical and financial success of the 1934 romantic drama Lac aux Dames, directed by her self-appointed mentor – and alleged lover – Marc Allégret.[1] The son of an evangelical missionary, Marc Allégret (born on December 22, 1900, in Basel, Switzerland) was to have become a lawyer. At age 16, his life took a different path as a result of his romantic involvement – and elopement to London – with his mentor and later "adoptive uncle" André Gide (1947 Nobel Prize winner in Literature), more than 30 years his senior and married to Madeleine Rondeaux for more than two decades. In various forms – including a threesome with painter Théo Van Rysselberghe's daughter Elisabeth – the Allégret-Gide relationship remained steady until the late '20s and their trip to...
- 2/28/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Sean Penn: Honorary César goes Hollywood – again (photo: Sean Penn in '21 Grams') Sean Penn, 54, will receive the 2015 Honorary César (César d'Honneur), the French Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Crafts has announced. That means the French Academy's powers-that-be are once again trying to make the Prix César ceremony relevant to the American media. Their tactic is to hand out the career award to a widely known and relatively young – i.e., media friendly – Hollywood celebrity. (Scroll down for more such examples.) In the words of the French Academy, Honorary César 2015 recipient Sean Penn is a "living legend" and "a stand-alone icon in American cinema." It has also hailed the two-time Best Actor Oscar winner as a "mythical actor, a politically active personality and an exceptional director." Penn will be honored at the César Awards ceremony on Feb. 20, 2015. Sean Penn movies Sean Penn movies range from the teen comedy...
- 1/28/2015
- by Steve Montgomery
- Alt Film Guide
Suicide Squad: Viola Davis, who has twice been nominated for an Academy Award (Doubt, The Help), is in line to play a villainous role in DC's Suicide Squad. She would play Amanda Waller, a character often charged with running the team in the comic book series. Schedule issues may be an issue, however, since she is also busy starring in the hit TV show How to Get Away with Murder. The cast currently includes Will Smith, Jared Leto, Tom Hardy, Margot Robbie and Jai Courtney. [Latino Review] Pontius Pilate: Brad Pitt, who was attached to star in a new movie titled Pontius Pilate (a character depicted above by Jean Marais in a 1962 version), has dropped out, and so has financier-distributor Warner Bros., but the project is still moving forward. Reportedly, that's...
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- 12/17/2014
- by Peter Martin
- Movies.com
The Classic French Film Festival celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1920s through the 1980s (with a particular focus on filmmakers from the New Wave), offering a comprehensive overview of French cinema. Elena And Her Men will screen as part of the festival at 1pm Sunday, June 22nd at the St. Louis Art Museum.
Set amid the military maneuvers and carnivals of turn-of-the-century France, Jean Renoir’s delirious romantic comedy “Elena and Her Men” stars a radiant Ingrid Bergman as a beautiful but impoverished Polish princess who drives men of all stations to fits of desperate love. Among her smitten admirers are handsome lover Henri (Mel Ferrer) and the wealthy boot manufacturer she’s supposed to wed. When Elena elicits the fascination of a famous general (Jean Marais), she finds herself at the center of romantic machinations and political scheming,...
Set amid the military maneuvers and carnivals of turn-of-the-century France, Jean Renoir’s delirious romantic comedy “Elena and Her Men” stars a radiant Ingrid Bergman as a beautiful but impoverished Polish princess who drives men of all stations to fits of desperate love. Among her smitten admirers are handsome lover Henri (Mel Ferrer) and the wealthy boot manufacturer she’s supposed to wed. When Elena elicits the fascination of a famous general (Jean Marais), she finds herself at the center of romantic machinations and political scheming,...
- 6/19/2014
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Danielle Darrieux turns 97: Darrieux has probably enjoyed the longest film star career in history (photo: Danielle Darrieux in ‘La Ronde’) Screen legend Danielle Darrieux is turning 97 today, May 1, 2014. In all likelihood, the Bordeaux-born (1917) Darrieux has enjoyed the longest "movie star" career ever: eight decades, from Wilhelm Thiele’s Le Bal (1931) to Denys Granier-Deferre’s The Wedding Cake / Pièce montée (2010). (Mickey Rooney has had a longer film career — nearly nine decades — but mostly as a supporting player in minor roles.) Absurdly, despite a prestigious career consisting of more than 100 movie roles, Danielle Darrieux — delightful in Club de femmes, superb in The Earrings of Madame De…, alternately hilarious and heartbreaking in 8 Women — has never won an Honorary Oscar. But then again, very few women have. At least, the French Academy did award her an Honorary César back in 1985; additionally, in 2002 Darrieux and her fellow 8 Women / 8 femmes co-stars shared Best Actress honors...
- 5/1/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: July 22, 2014
Price: Blu-ray/DVD Combo $124.95
Studio: Criterion
French director Jacques Demy launched his glorious feature filmmaking career in the Sixties, a decade of astonishing invention in his national cinema. He stood out from the crowd of his fellow New Wavers, however, by filtering his self-conscious formalism through deeply emotional storytelling. Fate and coincidence, doomed love, and storybook romance surface throughout his films, many of which are further united by the intersecting lives of characters who either appear or are referenced across titles.
Six of Demy’s films are collected in The Essential Jacques Demy. Ranging from musical to melodrama to fantasia, all are triumphs of visual and sound design, camera work, and music, and they are galvanized by the great stars of French cinema at their centers, including Anouk Aimée (8 1/2), Catherine Deneuve (Belle de Jour), and Jeanne Moreau (Jules and Jim).
The six works here, made...
Price: Blu-ray/DVD Combo $124.95
Studio: Criterion
French director Jacques Demy launched his glorious feature filmmaking career in the Sixties, a decade of astonishing invention in his national cinema. He stood out from the crowd of his fellow New Wavers, however, by filtering his self-conscious formalism through deeply emotional storytelling. Fate and coincidence, doomed love, and storybook romance surface throughout his films, many of which are further united by the intersecting lives of characters who either appear or are referenced across titles.
Six of Demy’s films are collected in The Essential Jacques Demy. Ranging from musical to melodrama to fantasia, all are triumphs of visual and sound design, camera work, and music, and they are galvanized by the great stars of French cinema at their centers, including Anouk Aimée (8 1/2), Catherine Deneuve (Belle de Jour), and Jeanne Moreau (Jules and Jim).
The six works here, made...
- 4/24/2014
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
From Siegfried Sassoon and Ivor Novello to Gore Vidal and Fred Astaire, a surprisingly large number of writers have paired off with film stars
On Monday, a raunchy letter from Ernest Hemingway to Marlene Dietrich – a surreal fantasy about her, reflecting what he called an "unsynchronised passion" that endured for more than 25 years – is part of an online auction of Dietrich's possessions. Although their relationship remained platonic, many other authors did have movie-star lovers …
F Scott Fitzgerald – Lois Moran
Fitzgerald's affair in the 1920s with this Zelda lookalike, a silent screen actor who was 17 when he first met her, infuriated his wife – she once threw a jewellery gift from him out of a train window while raging about Moran – but inspired Dick Diver's romance with the actor Rosemary Hoyt in Tender Is the Night.
Siegfried Sassoon – Ivor Novello
The war poet's relationship with Novello – now remembered mostly as a songwriter,...
On Monday, a raunchy letter from Ernest Hemingway to Marlene Dietrich – a surreal fantasy about her, reflecting what he called an "unsynchronised passion" that endured for more than 25 years – is part of an online auction of Dietrich's possessions. Although their relationship remained platonic, many other authors did have movie-star lovers …
F Scott Fitzgerald – Lois Moran
Fitzgerald's affair in the 1920s with this Zelda lookalike, a silent screen actor who was 17 when he first met her, infuriated his wife – she once threw a jewellery gift from him out of a train window while raging about Moran – but inspired Dick Diver's romance with the actor Rosemary Hoyt in Tender Is the Night.
Siegfried Sassoon – Ivor Novello
The war poet's relationship with Novello – now remembered mostly as a songwriter,...
- 3/14/2014
- by John Dugdale
- The Guardian - Film News
The world is all out of whack: multiple Dutch tilts are on display in Voyage sans espoir (1943), an unbelievably glossy poetic realist proto-noir from Christian-Jaque: the film actually begins with railway tracks viewed from the front of a speeding train, upside down, as the camera drunkenly rolls upright and titles come flying towards us, slapping flat across the frame like flies hitting a windshield.
The plot is convoluted but crisp—chance encounters tie together Jean Marais, fleeing his job at a bank to see life and settle in Argentina, with an escaped jailbird of psychopathic demeanor (Paul Bernard) and his girlfriend, the radiant Simone Renant. There's also a likably crooked ship's captain carrying a torch for Renant, a sinister ethnic-type sailor (Ky Duyen), and a pair of hard-drinking but eternally sober detectives who resemble nothing more than the Thompson Twins from Tintin. The French had a nifty way with...
The plot is convoluted but crisp—chance encounters tie together Jean Marais, fleeing his job at a bank to see life and settle in Argentina, with an escaped jailbird of psychopathic demeanor (Paul Bernard) and his girlfriend, the radiant Simone Renant. There's also a likably crooked ship's captain carrying a torch for Renant, a sinister ethnic-type sailor (Ky Duyen), and a pair of hard-drinking but eternally sober detectives who resemble nothing more than the Thompson Twins from Tintin. The French had a nifty way with...
- 3/6/2014
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
As a special surprise for this year's 18th edition the Colcoa Festival (City of Lights, City of Angels) "A Week of French Film Premieres in Hollywood" has added an unprecedented seven classic films to its popular roster. The festival runs from April 21-28 at the Directors Guild of America. For the first time, a daily matinee showing of a classic will complement the new films shown in competition.
Focus on a filmmaker : Cédric Klapisch
Colcoa will honor writer-director Cédric Klapisch on Thursday, April 24 with a special presentation of L'Auberge Espagnole (2002) as well as the Premiere of his new film Chinese Puzzle that will be released in May in the U.S. by Cohen Media Group. Chinese Puzzle completes a trilogy Klapisich began in 2002 with L'Auberge Espagnole,followed by Russian Dolls in 2005. The cast includes Romain Duris, Audrey Tautou and Cécile de France. Klapisch joins previously honored writer-directors Bertrand Blier, Costa Gavras, Florent Siri, Julie Delpy and Alain Resnais whose key body of work has been shown in past events. This will be the third film by the writer-director to be presented at the festival, following Paris and My Piece of the Pie. Cédric Klapisch will meet the audience for a Happy Hour Talk panel dedicated to his work. (Colcoa Classics + Panel +Premiere of Chinese Puzzle)
Homage to Patrice Chéreau
The late writer-director Patrice Chéreau (1944-2013), who attended Colcoa in 2003 for the world Premiere of Son frère (His Brother) will be remembered in the Colcoa Classics program, which includes a special presentation of digitally restored director's cut of Queen Margot (1994), based on a novel of Alexandre Dumas, co-written by Danièle Thompson & Patrice Chéreau, and directed by Chéreau. The cast includes Isabelle Adjani, Jean-Hugues Anglade and Daniel Auteuil. The film (celebrating its 20th anniversary) is presented in association with Cohen Media Group. The film will have will be released theatrically, as well as in digital format in the U.S.
Premiere of the Restored Version Beauty and the Beast Colcoa will present the digitally restored print of the remarkable Beauty and the Beast (1946), a romantic drama written and directed by Jean Cocteau and starring Josette Day and Jean Marais in partnership with the Franco-American Cultural Fund (Facf), Snd/M6, Janus Films and La Cinémathèque Française.
Premiere of the Restored Version Favorites of the Moon
A special 30th anniversary screening of Favourites of the Moon (1984), winner of the Special Jury Prize that year at the Venice International Film Festival, a comedy co-written by Gérard Brach and Otar Iosseliani and directed by Otar Iosseliani, starring Mathieu Amalric, Alix de Montaigu, Pascal Aubier, Jean-Pierre Beauviala, will be presented in association with the Cohen Media Group before its digital release in the U.S.
Premiere of the Restored Version Purple Noon
The film is also a special presentation of Purple Noon , a drama based on Patricia Highsmith's novel, co-written by Paul Gégauff and René Clément , directed by René Clément and starring Alain Delon, Maurice Ronet and Marie Laforêt and presented in association with the Franco-American Cultural Fund (Facf), StudioCanal, Janus Films and La Cinémathèque Française.
Premier of the Restored Version of L'assassin habite... au 21 New digitally restored version of L'assassin habite... au 21, (1942) a drama co-written by Stanislas-André Steeman and Henri-Georges Clouzot , directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, starring Pierre Fresnay, Suzy Delair, Jean Tissier. The film is presented in association with Titra Tvs and Gaumont.
FRANÇOIS Truffaut: A Tribute
Citing the 30th anniversary of the passing of universally renowned François Truffaut in 1984, Colcoa will pay tribute to the writer-director with a special program.(To be announced soon)
From April 21 to April 28, 2014, filmgoers will celebrate the 18th edition of Colcoa "A Week Of French Film Premieres In Hollywood" at the Directors Guild of America. The 18th line-up of films in competition for the Colcoa Awards will be announced April 1, 2014.
About ColcoaColcoa was created by the Franco-American Cultural Fund, a unique collaborative effort of the Directors Guild of America, the Motion Picture Association, the Writers Guild of America West, and France's Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music (Sacem). Colcoa is also supported by France's Society of Authors, Directors and Producers (L'arp), the Film and TV Office of the French Embassy in Los Angeles, the Cnc and Unifrance.
...
Focus on a filmmaker : Cédric Klapisch
Colcoa will honor writer-director Cédric Klapisch on Thursday, April 24 with a special presentation of L'Auberge Espagnole (2002) as well as the Premiere of his new film Chinese Puzzle that will be released in May in the U.S. by Cohen Media Group. Chinese Puzzle completes a trilogy Klapisich began in 2002 with L'Auberge Espagnole,followed by Russian Dolls in 2005. The cast includes Romain Duris, Audrey Tautou and Cécile de France. Klapisch joins previously honored writer-directors Bertrand Blier, Costa Gavras, Florent Siri, Julie Delpy and Alain Resnais whose key body of work has been shown in past events. This will be the third film by the writer-director to be presented at the festival, following Paris and My Piece of the Pie. Cédric Klapisch will meet the audience for a Happy Hour Talk panel dedicated to his work. (Colcoa Classics + Panel +Premiere of Chinese Puzzle)
Homage to Patrice Chéreau
The late writer-director Patrice Chéreau (1944-2013), who attended Colcoa in 2003 for the world Premiere of Son frère (His Brother) will be remembered in the Colcoa Classics program, which includes a special presentation of digitally restored director's cut of Queen Margot (1994), based on a novel of Alexandre Dumas, co-written by Danièle Thompson & Patrice Chéreau, and directed by Chéreau. The cast includes Isabelle Adjani, Jean-Hugues Anglade and Daniel Auteuil. The film (celebrating its 20th anniversary) is presented in association with Cohen Media Group. The film will have will be released theatrically, as well as in digital format in the U.S.
Premiere of the Restored Version Beauty and the Beast Colcoa will present the digitally restored print of the remarkable Beauty and the Beast (1946), a romantic drama written and directed by Jean Cocteau and starring Josette Day and Jean Marais in partnership with the Franco-American Cultural Fund (Facf), Snd/M6, Janus Films and La Cinémathèque Française.
Premiere of the Restored Version Favorites of the Moon
A special 30th anniversary screening of Favourites of the Moon (1984), winner of the Special Jury Prize that year at the Venice International Film Festival, a comedy co-written by Gérard Brach and Otar Iosseliani and directed by Otar Iosseliani, starring Mathieu Amalric, Alix de Montaigu, Pascal Aubier, Jean-Pierre Beauviala, will be presented in association with the Cohen Media Group before its digital release in the U.S.
Premiere of the Restored Version Purple Noon
The film is also a special presentation of Purple Noon , a drama based on Patricia Highsmith's novel, co-written by Paul Gégauff and René Clément , directed by René Clément and starring Alain Delon, Maurice Ronet and Marie Laforêt and presented in association with the Franco-American Cultural Fund (Facf), StudioCanal, Janus Films and La Cinémathèque Française.
Premier of the Restored Version of L'assassin habite... au 21 New digitally restored version of L'assassin habite... au 21, (1942) a drama co-written by Stanislas-André Steeman and Henri-Georges Clouzot , directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, starring Pierre Fresnay, Suzy Delair, Jean Tissier. The film is presented in association with Titra Tvs and Gaumont.
FRANÇOIS Truffaut: A Tribute
Citing the 30th anniversary of the passing of universally renowned François Truffaut in 1984, Colcoa will pay tribute to the writer-director with a special program.(To be announced soon)
From April 21 to April 28, 2014, filmgoers will celebrate the 18th edition of Colcoa "A Week Of French Film Premieres In Hollywood" at the Directors Guild of America. The 18th line-up of films in competition for the Colcoa Awards will be announced April 1, 2014.
About ColcoaColcoa was created by the Franco-American Cultural Fund, a unique collaborative effort of the Directors Guild of America, the Motion Picture Association, the Writers Guild of America West, and France's Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music (Sacem). Colcoa is also supported by France's Society of Authors, Directors and Producers (L'arp), the Film and TV Office of the French Embassy in Los Angeles, the Cnc and Unifrance.
...
- 2/25/2014
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
City of Lights, City of Angels (Colcoa), a week of French film premieres in Hollywood, has rolled out a terrific lineup of seven classic films for the 18th edition of the festival, running April 21-28 at the DGA. Screenings will supplement new films in the competition lineup, which will be announced April 1. Colcoa will honor writer honor writer-director Cedric Klapisch on Thursday, April 24 with a special presentation of "L'Auberge Espagnole" (2002) as well as the Premiere of his new film "Chinese Puzzle" that will be released in May in the U.S. by Cohen Media Group. The fest will also screen late writer/director Patrice Chereau's 1994 director's cut of "Queen Margot," based on a novel by Alexandre Dumas and starring Isabelle Adjani, Jean-Hugues Anglade and Daniel Auteuil. Digitally restored prints of Jean Cocteau's 1946 classic "Beauty and the Beast" starring Josette Day and Jean Marais, and a new print of...
- 2/19/2014
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Thompson on Hollywood
★★★★☆Cited by numerous contemporary fantasy filmmakers - Mexican maestro Guillermo del Toro included - as a major influence on their own consequent bodies of work, French movie magician Jean Cocteau is commemorated by the BFI once again with the 4K rerelease of his 1946 fairy tale, La Belle et la Bête. Based on the 18th century novelist Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont's classic story of corrupting curses and woodland witchcraft, it's Josette Day's eye-catching Belle who eventually falls for the titular Beast - one half of a superb double performance from Jean Marais - following an encroachment by her father.
- 1/6/2014
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
Almost 70 years on, the Jean Cocteau classic has lost none of its wonder and mystery
Reading this on mobile? Click here to view video
The BFI's gothic season reaches its delirious conclusion with this remastered print of Jean Cocteau's exotic old fairytale; a film that does not look so much imported from the 1940s as blown in from another world. Jean Marais plays the hirsute Beast, a self-loathing cousin of the Cowardly Lion, who keeps Beauty (Josette Day) captive in a haunted mansion, proposing marriage with a forlorn persistence.
"You caress me as you would an animal," he complains, when the prisoner leans in to stroke his head. "But you are an animal," replies Beauty, who learns to love him all the same.
Cocteau's film is antic and playful, but there is real pain (and genuine eroticism) behind its flamboyant façade. La belle et la bête is full of wonder and mystery.
Reading this on mobile? Click here to view video
The BFI's gothic season reaches its delirious conclusion with this remastered print of Jean Cocteau's exotic old fairytale; a film that does not look so much imported from the 1940s as blown in from another world. Jean Marais plays the hirsute Beast, a self-loathing cousin of the Cowardly Lion, who keeps Beauty (Josette Day) captive in a haunted mansion, proposing marriage with a forlorn persistence.
"You caress me as you would an animal," he complains, when the prisoner leans in to stroke his head. "But you are an animal," replies Beauty, who learns to love him all the same.
Cocteau's film is antic and playful, but there is real pain (and genuine eroticism) behind its flamboyant façade. La belle et la bête is full of wonder and mystery.
- 1/5/2014
- by Xan Brooks
- The Guardian - Film News
Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom (12A)
(Justin Chadwick, 2013, UK/Sa) Idris Elba, Naomie Harris, Tony Kgoroge, Riaad Moosa, Jamie Bartlett. 146 mins
Prestige dramatisation finds little to add to a true story that's already inspirational enough, and has already been much retold, especially since Mandela's death. That leaves this as a slightly redundant exercise in biopic box-ticking and corner-cutting, puffed up with awards-friendly grandeur and less interested in the political questions than the personal heart-strings. Still, Elba conveys something of the man as well as the icon, and Harris is a spirited Winnie.
Last Vegas (12A)
(Jon Turtletaub, 2013, Us) Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline. 105 mins
If that title and cast had you thinking "is this The Hangover for seniors?", you wouldn't be far off. It's another Las Vegas bachelor-party adventure, in which four decaying dudes cement their buddyhood and lose their dignity – often assisted by people a fraction of their age,...
(Justin Chadwick, 2013, UK/Sa) Idris Elba, Naomie Harris, Tony Kgoroge, Riaad Moosa, Jamie Bartlett. 146 mins
Prestige dramatisation finds little to add to a true story that's already inspirational enough, and has already been much retold, especially since Mandela's death. That leaves this as a slightly redundant exercise in biopic box-ticking and corner-cutting, puffed up with awards-friendly grandeur and less interested in the political questions than the personal heart-strings. Still, Elba conveys something of the man as well as the icon, and Harris is a spirited Winnie.
Last Vegas (12A)
(Jon Turtletaub, 2013, Us) Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline. 105 mins
If that title and cast had you thinking "is this The Hangover for seniors?", you wouldn't be far off. It's another Las Vegas bachelor-party adventure, in which four decaying dudes cement their buddyhood and lose their dignity – often assisted by people a fraction of their age,...
- 1/4/2014
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
Jean Cocteau's magical exploration of the fairytale is compelling and bizarre masterpiece
Jean Cocteau's erotic and surreal fable is now revived on the big screen as part of the BFI's fascinating Gothic season. Watched now, 67 years after its first release, you can sense how its echoes have reverberated in the figures of Guillermo del Toro and Michael Jackson. Its special effects are prehistoric compared to those of our digital 21st century, and yet they are deeply disturbing. When bodies appear through walls or fly up into the air, it is almost as if Cocteau's camera has miraculously recorded a dream.
Josette Day plays the Beauty, who agrees to take her father's place as the prisoner of a terrifying Beast (Jean Marais); this hirsute being lives in mysterious seclusion in his enchanted mansion whose lights are held by arms that protrude through the dark walls. (Did Polanski take something...
Jean Cocteau's erotic and surreal fable is now revived on the big screen as part of the BFI's fascinating Gothic season. Watched now, 67 years after its first release, you can sense how its echoes have reverberated in the figures of Guillermo del Toro and Michael Jackson. Its special effects are prehistoric compared to those of our digital 21st century, and yet they are deeply disturbing. When bodies appear through walls or fly up into the air, it is almost as if Cocteau's camera has miraculously recorded a dream.
Josette Day plays the Beauty, who agrees to take her father's place as the prisoner of a terrifying Beast (Jean Marais); this hirsute being lives in mysterious seclusion in his enchanted mansion whose lights are held by arms that protrude through the dark walls. (Did Polanski take something...
- 1/3/2014
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
‘La Cage aux Folles’ director Edouard Molinaro, who collaborated with Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau, Orson Welles, dead at 85 Edouard Molinaro, best known internationally for the late ’70s box office comedy hit La Cage aux Folles, which earned him a Best Director Academy Award nomination, died of lung failure on December 7, 2013, at a Paris hospital. Molinaro was 85. Born on May 31, 1928, in Bordeaux, in southwestern France, to a middle-class family, Molinaro began his six-decade-long film and television career in the mid-’40s, directing narrative and industrial shorts such as Evasion (1946), the Death parable Un monsieur très chic ("A Very Elegant Gentleman," 1948), and Le verbe en chair / The Word in the Flesh (1950), in which a poet realizes that greed is everywhere — including his own heart. At the time, Molinaro also worked as an assistant director, collaborating with, among others, Robert Vernay (the 1954 version of The Count of Monte Cristo, starring Jean Marais) and...
- 12/8/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
The UK's Grimm Up North has partnered with the BFI to host a series of screenings in unique and atmospheric venues across Greater Manchester as part of their national Gothic season, and here are the details of what's ahead.
The two events that complete the BFI (British Film Institute)'s Gothic season will be site-specific, in which the atmospheric location will add an eerie element of supernatural ambience to the proceedings. The Innocents and The Others are screening at the supposedly haunted Tudor mansion Ordsall Hall on 13th December 2013 with Bride of Frankenstein and La Belle et La Bete following on 10th January 2014 at Victorian Gothic beauty John Rylands Library.
To learn more and for tickets, visit the official Grimm Up North website, befriend them on Facebook, and follow them on Twitter.
Ordsall Hall, 13th December 2013
The Innocents (1961) + The Others (2001)
Doors open at 18.30 with the first film beginning at 19.00.
Incongruously...
The two events that complete the BFI (British Film Institute)'s Gothic season will be site-specific, in which the atmospheric location will add an eerie element of supernatural ambience to the proceedings. The Innocents and The Others are screening at the supposedly haunted Tudor mansion Ordsall Hall on 13th December 2013 with Bride of Frankenstein and La Belle et La Bete following on 10th January 2014 at Victorian Gothic beauty John Rylands Library.
To learn more and for tickets, visit the official Grimm Up North website, befriend them on Facebook, and follow them on Twitter.
Ordsall Hall, 13th December 2013
The Innocents (1961) + The Others (2001)
Doors open at 18.30 with the first film beginning at 19.00.
Incongruously...
- 11/28/2013
- by Debi Moore
- DreadCentral.com
Whoa. I didn't even realize Christophe Gans was working on this one. "Beauty and the Beast" is one of those irresistible targets for filmmakers, and I would think for French filmmakers, there is a whole different level of expectation attached to anyone who tackles the material. After all, "La Belle et la Bete," the 1946 film by Jean Cocteau, is one of the classic texts of French cinema, and one of the great fantasy films of all time. Jean Marais gave one of the great film performances as the Beast, and the design of the Beast is both memorable and striking....
- 9/27/2013
- by Drew McWeeny
- Hitfix
It's that time of year again -- or what used to be that time of year. NewFest is here (September 6-11). Yes, the celebration of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and what-have-you cinema is back for its 25th anniversary. The main venue will be the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater, considered by some to be the best cinema in Manhattan, one that boasts a truly superior sound system.
(Anyone who ever attended NewFest when it was held at the New School with its second-rate visuals and third-rate resonance will rejoice.)
In the past, this deliciously raucous event has screened a mixed bag of semi-brilliant to much-less-so offerings, many you'll never ever get to see anywhere else on a "big" screen whether you reside in the Big Apple or in Idaho. On the plus side, watching a woefully dreadful movie with a roomful of knowing Glbtq cinephiles is often a hoot.
(Anyone who ever attended NewFest when it was held at the New School with its second-rate visuals and third-rate resonance will rejoice.)
In the past, this deliciously raucous event has screened a mixed bag of semi-brilliant to much-less-so offerings, many you'll never ever get to see anywhere else on a "big" screen whether you reside in the Big Apple or in Idaho. On the plus side, watching a woefully dreadful movie with a roomful of knowing Glbtq cinephiles is often a hoot.
- 8/26/2013
- by Brandon Judell
- www.culturecatch.com
The French film industry has always been among the worlds most important……at least to film studies professors. Most French movies are either funded by the French government or made with the support of government-linked media companies. Filmmakers face little market pressure in the creative process. That helps explain why they’re so boring!
Starbuck opens this weekend so we here at We Are Movie Geeks have decided to post this article about our favorite French films. Okay, so Starbuck is technically a Canadian film shot in Quebec, but its French language so, in our eyes that makes it French! The Hollywood remake is already in the can. It stars Vince Vaughn. The remake was originally tilted Dickie Donor but they’ve changed it to Delivery Man, so you just know they’ve screwed it up bad. This list may not line up with that of your typical French Cinema scholar.
Starbuck opens this weekend so we here at We Are Movie Geeks have decided to post this article about our favorite French films. Okay, so Starbuck is technically a Canadian film shot in Quebec, but its French language so, in our eyes that makes it French! The Hollywood remake is already in the can. It stars Vince Vaughn. The remake was originally tilted Dickie Donor but they’ve changed it to Delivery Man, so you just know they’ve screwed it up bad. This list may not line up with that of your typical French Cinema scholar.
- 4/30/2013
- by Movie Geeks
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
The Cinémathèque Française is currently running a major exhibition titled Le monde enchanté de Jacques Demy (through August 4) devoted to the great romantic fantasist who brought us such candy-colored musical reveries as The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The Young Girls of Rochefort and Donkey Skin. What caught my eye was a video on their website (unsubtitled, unfortunately) in which the head of the poster department, Jacques Ayroles, takes us into the Cinémathèque’s vaults (which contain some 25,000 posters) and talks about the various posters for Demy’s films.
The exhibition seems to place particular emphasis on Peau d’Âne or Donkey Skin, Demy’s beloved Cocteau-esque fantasy which, in 1970, was his greatest success (with over 2 million admissions in France) and which came hot on the heels of one of his most disappointing flops, the L.A.-set Model Shop. Based on the 17th-century fairytale by Charles Perrault (famously illustrated by Gustave Doré...
The exhibition seems to place particular emphasis on Peau d’Âne or Donkey Skin, Demy’s beloved Cocteau-esque fantasy which, in 1970, was his greatest success (with over 2 million admissions in France) and which came hot on the heels of one of his most disappointing flops, the L.A.-set Model Shop. Based on the 17th-century fairytale by Charles Perrault (famously illustrated by Gustave Doré...
- 4/27/2013
- by Adrian Curry
- MUBI
Anyone attempting another film based on La Belle et la Bête starts at a disadvantage. Despite whatever new twist or spin he or she has in mind, it will inevitably pale in comparison to Jean Cocteau’s version. It may have better special effects, possibly even the best, most advanced effects the world has ever seen, effects that makes James Cameron’s head spin, but it will still lack Cocteau’s secret weapon: Jean Marais’ eyes.
Our attention is directed towards his eyes from the Beast’s first appearance. A superimposed glow exudes menace and ferociousness before disappearing a few frames later, leaving before revealing the true light source, the fire of humanity hidden beneath fur, fangs, and a mane. The make-up is modest, though the wiggling ears are particularly adorable. It limits what Marais is able to convey with his face, but helped by cinematographer Henri Alekan’s lighting,...
Our attention is directed towards his eyes from the Beast’s first appearance. A superimposed glow exudes menace and ferociousness before disappearing a few frames later, leaving before revealing the true light source, the fire of humanity hidden beneath fur, fangs, and a mane. The make-up is modest, though the wiggling ears are particularly adorable. It limits what Marais is able to convey with his face, but helped by cinematographer Henri Alekan’s lighting,...
- 2/26/2013
- by Alex Hansen
- MUBI
Top 10 Aliya Whiteley Feb 8, 2013
From silent classics to the present, here's Aliya's pick of 10 foreign-language fantasy films you have to see...
It’s easier to say what fantasy isn’t, rather than what it is. It’s not the robots or interplanetary adventures of science fiction, and it’s not the inexplicable and the terrifying creations of horror. All we can say for sure about fantasy is that, within the world on the screen, anything can happen.
So here’s an alphabetical list of some of the more interesting foreign-language films in which the rules no longer apply. There may be strange happenings and mythical beasts but they are not out to scare us, or to confirm our suspicions that we need to be afraid of the new and the strange. Instead they challenge us to look with, as Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio would have it in The Abyss, better eyes than that.
From silent classics to the present, here's Aliya's pick of 10 foreign-language fantasy films you have to see...
It’s easier to say what fantasy isn’t, rather than what it is. It’s not the robots or interplanetary adventures of science fiction, and it’s not the inexplicable and the terrifying creations of horror. All we can say for sure about fantasy is that, within the world on the screen, anything can happen.
So here’s an alphabetical list of some of the more interesting foreign-language films in which the rules no longer apply. There may be strange happenings and mythical beasts but they are not out to scare us, or to confirm our suspicions that we need to be afraid of the new and the strange. Instead they challenge us to look with, as Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio would have it in The Abyss, better eyes than that.
- 2/7/2013
- by ryanlambie
- Den of Geek
Le bonheur (1934) may be Marcel L'Herbier's best talkie—even if it is, its existence should be enough to disprove the widely and uncritically accepted assumption that the director went into a steep decline with the coming of sound.
In fact, the bigger problem is that not enough people know his work at all. In the silent era, he quite deliberately competed with Abel Gance in terms of cinematic spectacle, swinging his camera from ropes and wheeling it on a lighting stand, while also pursuing a cinema of elaborate, stylized production design. There's something inscrutable about him: he shuttles from genre trifles to experimental epics, and his true sensibility may be glimpsed as much in the former as the latter. Perhaps his homosexuality, an open secret in the film business, led him to to employ layers of careful coding more than most commercial filmmakers.
L'Herbier's early talkies include the lighter-than-air...
In fact, the bigger problem is that not enough people know his work at all. In the silent era, he quite deliberately competed with Abel Gance in terms of cinematic spectacle, swinging his camera from ropes and wheeling it on a lighting stand, while also pursuing a cinema of elaborate, stylized production design. There's something inscrutable about him: he shuttles from genre trifles to experimental epics, and his true sensibility may be glimpsed as much in the former as the latter. Perhaps his homosexuality, an open secret in the film business, led him to to employ layers of careful coding more than most commercial filmmakers.
L'Herbier's early talkies include the lighter-than-air...
- 10/4/2012
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
Today marks the centennial of the great French photography Robert Doisneau and though he wasn't a celebrity photographer -- the kind we obviously have the greatest use for as film obsessives -- he did them on occassion. I love this shot of one of the great auteur/muse pairings (both onscreen and off) actor Jean Marais (left) and Jean Cocteau (right).
Here's another of Pablo Picasso and Françoise Gilot.
Remember when Anthony Hopkins and Natasha McElhone pretended to be them? I know I know. No one saw Surviving Picasso (1996)... but I did because Julianne Moore was Dora Maar (another Picasso victim... excuse me, lover!) and with Julianne I martyr myself to completism.
If you could photograph one auteur/muse pairing, who would it be?...
Here's another of Pablo Picasso and Françoise Gilot.
Remember when Anthony Hopkins and Natasha McElhone pretended to be them? I know I know. No one saw Surviving Picasso (1996)... but I did because Julianne Moore was Dora Maar (another Picasso victim... excuse me, lover!) and with Julianne I martyr myself to completism.
If you could photograph one auteur/muse pairing, who would it be?...
- 4/14/2012
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
One of the pleasures of digging around for movie posters is coming across great designs for films that have otherwise been forgotten, that have not become part of the pantheon—or even any of its foothills—but which nevertheless are fascinating reminders of areas of cinema history that are usually ignored. The other day I posted a lovely Russian poster on Movie Poster of the Day for an adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s White Nights that I wasn’t familiar with but which, I then discovered, was directed by a man described as “the high priest of Stalinist Cinema.” You can read more about that here.
When this terrific poster for Le passe-muraille caught my eye I knew absolutely nothing about the film, and, with the exception of English actress Joan Greenwood (Kind Hearts and Coronets), nearly every name on the poster, from star Bourvil to director Jean Boyer to author Marcel Aymé,...
When this terrific poster for Le passe-muraille caught my eye I knew absolutely nothing about the film, and, with the exception of English actress Joan Greenwood (Kind Hearts and Coronets), nearly every name on the poster, from star Bourvil to director Jean Boyer to author Marcel Aymé,...
- 3/17/2012
- MUBI
Even today, for all the tools available to film makers, Beauty and The Beast by Jean Coctaeu ranks as one of the most beautiful renderings of a fairy tale ever put on screen. It's a quiet, sometimes outright slow film, utterly dependent on the indulgence of the viewer, but given that indulgence it has profoundly moved generation after generation of film lovers creating a fan base that extends from the arthouse to the Famous Monsters fan. Me? believe it or not I prefer the Disney version. This probably marks me as a cultural philistine. My saving grace is that I can't imagine my Bluray collection complete without this on the shelf. There are unforgettable images here and a devastating performance by Jean Marais as the beast...
- 10/13/2011
- Screen Anarchy
DVD Playhouse—September 2011
By Allen Gardner
In A Better World (Sony) Winner of last year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar, this Danish export looks at two fractured families and the effect that the adult world dysfunction has on their two sons, who form an immediate and potentially deadly bond. Director Susanne Bier delivers another powerful work that maintains its drive during the films’ first 2/3, then falters somewhat during the last act. Still, well-worth seeing, and beautifully made. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Deleted scenes; Commentary by Bier and editor Pernille Bech Christensen; Interview with Bier. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS-hd 5.1 surround.
X-men First Class (20th Century Fox) “Origins” film set in the early 1960s, traces the beginnings of Magento and Professor X (played ably here by Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy), and how the once-close friends and colleagues became bitter enemies. First half is slam-bang entertainment at its stylish best,...
By Allen Gardner
In A Better World (Sony) Winner of last year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar, this Danish export looks at two fractured families and the effect that the adult world dysfunction has on their two sons, who form an immediate and potentially deadly bond. Director Susanne Bier delivers another powerful work that maintains its drive during the films’ first 2/3, then falters somewhat during the last act. Still, well-worth seeing, and beautifully made. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Deleted scenes; Commentary by Bier and editor Pernille Bech Christensen; Interview with Bier. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS-hd 5.1 surround.
X-men First Class (20th Century Fox) “Origins” film set in the early 1960s, traces the beginnings of Magento and Professor X (played ably here by Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy), and how the once-close friends and colleagues became bitter enemies. First half is slam-bang entertainment at its stylish best,...
- 9/11/2011
- by The Hollywood Interview.com
- The Hollywood Interview
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